K-12 and the Other RINO

Reading In Name Only

By Bruce Deitrick Price

In politics, when liberals pretend to be conservatives, these phonies are often labeled RINOs – Republicans In Name Only. In our public schools, we have a similar phenomenon – namely, the phony literacy instruction that teaches Reading In Name Only.   The last 80 years can be simply summarized. The Education Establishment embraced a bogus method (ca. 1931) called Whole Word or Look-say. The basic idea was that children must memorize sight-words (i.e., graphic designs). Less than 20 years later, Rudolf Flesch wrote his famous Why Johnny Can't Read explaining that this method had quickly caused the country to sink into an illiteracy crisis that continues until today.

America was profoundly punked!

It is not unusual for an American opera singer to memorize Italian words and sing them beautifully without knowing what specific words mean or why they have those particular sounds. The singer cannot "read" any other Italian – just the memorized sentences.   Similarly, Dr. Seuss wrote a small book with a very limited vocabulary – The Cat in the Hat – that most children could memorize. With this RINO instruction, schools would pretend their students were learning to "read." The children could "read" only in the sense that the opera singer can "read" Italian. Show the children another passage; they can't read it. Rearrange the words of The Cat in the Hat, and the children won't be able to read them. You see how it works. It's 100% fake. It's RINO...........Read more